Debbie Schlussel Reviews “What Lincoln Killed”

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – Here’s a quote from Debbie’s review, read the rest in today’s transcript: “It was interesting.  To me, that’s the point of something like this, to make people think, and also to educate them.  I always learn a lot when I listen to and/or watch your historical projects.  You really are a scholar of these things.  They don’t teach this stuff.  Sure, I learned about the Supremacy Clause, I learned that a lot of the founders wanted to stay with Britain, I learned about a lot of the basics of what you delve into far more deeply.  Most of the facts and most of the things you talked about, I had no clue.  I never had learned about John Taylor of Caroline ever.  I learned of him from you.”

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Debbie Schlussel from DebbieDoesPolitics.com is on the Dude Maker Hotline with today’s movie reviews.  Deb, how are you?

Deb Schlussel:  Hi, doing great, and you?  Good morning.

Mike:  I’d be better if we didn’t have inflation to deal with.

Deb:  Yeah.  I think that that has a big connection with your new DVD, CD.

Mike:  What Lincoln Killed, CD set.

Deb:  I keep forgetting there’s no video to go along with it, and I keep wishing there was.  To me, that is the biggest drawback to your CDs.  I would love to see videos to go along with it.  I think it’s very interesting.  I think it’s very educational.  I learned a lot, as a I did with your two movies.  I think if you had the animation like you had with the others, it would draw in a lot of those of us who are keeping up with the Kardashians instead of really learning what’s going on in this world and in American history.  You have such a great talent for bringing out historical facts, historical situations, votes, debates on important issues that most people don’t know a lot about.  They don’t know a lot about the people, like John Taylor of Caroline who was in the last movie.  I think it’s important.  I don’t know if this is aimed at only the smart people that are interested, but I think it should be aimed also at the dumb people who need video to go along with it.

Mike:  I put the kids in there, because they’re involved in the dialogue the whole time, my daughters, that on some level it would be appealing to children, too, or at least older children.

Deb:  I love the inclusion of your daughters.  I loved that when you used them in your previous movies.  I think the way you relate what happened in American history to your daughters and the way they act like they don’t care and would rather get back to —

Mike:  That’s not acting.

Deb:  I thought the lines were good.  I get the vampire joke.  I heard that part.  I just think it’s so interesting.  I don’t think people realize what kind of debate there really was between all of these founders in trying to keep the states as separate countries.  I want to bring that back to what you were talking about today with the Fed and Bernanke and everything.  Back then, we really were more like separate nation states.  It was more of a confederation.  I wanted to ask you this, do you really think that we could have — there is a comparison made to Europe in the CDs.  Do you really think that we could have survived as a country if all of these states, now that we have 50 and the District of Columbia and these territories, if all of them had been separate countries allied in a confederation, do you think that would have worked?

Mike:  I think that there would be multiple confederations, and that’s what Jefferson thought, too.  There’s one scene in What Lincoln Killed that you’re describing where Jefferson is writing that letter.  He talks about, “Why should I not want to be friends of a confederation that forms west of the Mississippi River when the people that are going to settle it are my friends here east of the Mississippi River.  I bear them no grudge because they go off and form their own federation and their own states.”  Yeah, I think it would have worked.  Obviously, you can’t accurately predict these things, but I think it would certainly have prevented the massive, mobocracy, leviathan tragedy that we have in front of us today.  Maybe we’d have seven mobocracy tragedies, I don’t know.

Deb:  Look at Europe now.  They all agreed to use the same currency.  It turned into a disaster.  Now some countries want out.  You’ve got Greece and the disaster there.  Do you think something like that would have happened here if we were separate states?  You would have had Michigan, where I live, which is one of the most worse-off states that there is.  Our economic tragedy started when Jennifer Granholm — well, it actually started just as she was taking office.  She made it very bad, much worse over eight years.  We would be the Greece of the United States, and so would a few other states.  People would either not want to confederate with us or they’d want to get out.  It would be interesting to see what would happen.

I think actually if we were on our own — listen, I understand we’re a country.  I’m not for Michigan seceding or any kind of stuff like that, so nobody get me wrong, but I think if we were left on our own and didn’t have this huge federal safety net that has, because of the supremacy clause, which is a big topic in the CD, and because of federalism, but if we didn’t have those things going on so strongly and people couldn’t just sit back on all these social welfare safety nets, I think maybe Michigan would have been better off because we’d have to fend for ourselves.  We’d really have to work hard to change things.  You wouldn’t have the federal bailout. You wouldn’t have a lot of these other things.  Maybe we would be more like the founding fathers, more entrepreneurial, more fighting for our survival and fighting to make sure that we didn’t go back to becoming British colonies.  Maybe things would be different.

Mike:  Let’s give it a try.

Deb:  At this point, we’re so well beyond that.  That’s why nobody really knows about these debates that went on, which I found so interesting.  I like the way you told your daughters — it starts out at the beginning where one of your daughters has to write a report on a country and she was going to write about France.  You are telling her she could write about Louisiana because that really was a separate state the way France is now, way back in the day before the government took over.  Then you take off from there.  I think it’s a very, very interesting debate.  Texas, as you pointed out, has the 15th largest economy in the world if it was Texas alone as a country.  A few other states are like that, too.  I think California is much bigger and New York as well.

It would be interesting to see what would happen.  I think maybe things would be better, maybe things would be a little different.  We would still be confederated.  We would still have certain national interests.  The problem is those national interests have taken over with ObamaCare, with the growth of the entitlement state.  When you look at the federal functions that the government would perform under a confederation like protecting the borders, etc., those things are huge failures.  People are getting in.  We’re not enforcing immigration laws.  We’re not doing those kinds of things.  I wonder if those things would have been much better with the leaner and meaner confederation.  It’s very, very interesting.

That’s what I was thinking about the whole time that I listened to this, that I listened to the debates.  I listened to your quotes from Jefferson and John Taylor of Caroline and all of the others, the lawsuits that you talked about, all of that.  It was very interesting.  It provoked a lot of thought in my mind, how things would be today had we gone in another direction.  You might have regional alliances between states who had certain crops or economies in common.  I think it would have been interesting.  I think that could be a movie you could do, where you could look at how the United States would be, had things gone that way.  I was thinking about that the whole time.  You really, to me, related to how things are now.  I thought of how they would be now had we gone that way.

Mike:  I made an impression on you, I can tell.  What Lincoln Killed: Episode I has made an impression on Debbie Schlussel.

Deb:  It was interesting.  To me, that’s the point of something like this, to make people think, and also to educate them.  I always learn a lot when I listen to and/or watch your historical projects.  You really are a scholar of these things.  They don’t teach this stuff.  Sure, I learned about the Supremacy Clause, I learned that a lot of the founders wanted to stay with Britain, I learned about a lot of the basics of what you delve into far more deeply.  Most of the facts and most of the things you talked about, I had no clue.  I never had learned about John Taylor of Caroline ever.  I learned of him from you.  One thing I was going to ask you is, do any girls your daughters’ age really know what Duran Duran is?  I wondered that.

Mike:  [laughing] That’s another one of the jokes, John Taylor, Duran Duran, “Her name is Rio.”

Deb:  I got that.  By the way, when Bill Maher still had his ABC show and I was on Politically Incorrect, I was on with John Taylor.  He is a flaming liberal and not very bright.  He’s really a contrast to the John Taylor of Caroline, who was not just a pretty face but a pretty mind, too, a deep mind.

Mike:  What’s the rating for What Lincoln Killed: Episode I?

Deb:  I give it three and a half Reagans.  The only reason I reduced by one Reagan is you need video.  People like me, whose attention spans are short — I actually thought this was kind of great because it was like listening to old-time radio before we had video and you hear the different characters.  I think that some people might not understand which characters are which and they need video, even if it’s just animation, to go along with it.  I think it will keep their attention a little bit more.  Other than that, I thought it was very interesting.  I thought it was new.  There was so much information, as with all your projects, that I had never learned before.  If you’re somebody that wants to learn about history — Mike, I already said it and before in other shows when we’ve reviewed your stuff.  You really are a scholar, and you’re a scholar who knows how to make it relatable today with your daughters.  I thought that was the interesting part, where you worked off your daughters.  They weren’t interested, they had to do the school project but wanted to go back to watching — I forget what show your daughter wanted to go back to watching.  Was it one of the Real Housewives?

Mike:  No, Dance Moms of Miami.

Deb:  I thought it was interesting.  I was sitting in my office while I listened to it, at my computer.  I felt that it was a great educational tool.  Your stuff really needs to be, I think, in schools across America.  Sadly, in schools across America, we’re learning the pillars or Islam, things that have nothing to do with history, reading, writing or arithmetic.  We’re learning esoteric things that will have no use two weeks from now.  I think it’s unfortunate.  You have so much to offer.  I would love to see schools have this.  I would love to see parents and grandparents buy this to play not only so their kids will learn something very deep that you won’t even learn in college or grad school, but so that they will learn it along with their kids.  That’s the thing, I think adults could learn from your project.  I always learn something.  I feel I’m a better American when I listen to and/or watch your projects.  I learn things that people are not learning.

Mike:  What Lincoln Killed: Episode I, three and a half Reagans, you heard it there.  Thank you very much, by the way.  I’m flattered.  Do we have anything else to review?

Deb:  Yes, much substandard stuff in comparison.

Mike:  By the way, we do have Operation Educate.  Any teacher that asks for a copy, the teacher has to request it.  Any teacher that asks for a copy of any of my documentaries, regardless of which one it is, we always provide it to them free of charge.  We ask customers and fans to donate to Operation Educate to help offset the cost.  They are available.  I think we’re in 44 states now with Founding Father Film productions.  What Lincoln Killed is just the latest one.

Deb:  That’s great.  By the way, I wanted to compliment you on your excellent impression of Bill O’Reilly.  I thought it was well done, the way you enunciated the words the way he does.  You got it down pat.  I was impressed.

Mike:  He’s the star of What Lincoln Killed: Episode II.

Deb:  That will be interesting.

Mike:  We need to get the “No Spin Zone” in here one day and we’ll debate Lincoln.

End Mike Church Show Transcript